All of Matt_Sharp's Comments + Replies

What has your approach been over the past 12 months? Has it been consistently hostile towards veganism?

My assumption is that you've previously been targeting people who (1) care about animals and (2) are probably somewhat sympathetic towards the goals of veganism, (3) but want an easier option to help animals than becoming vegan. 

This seems like a very promising approach, and I can imagine most of my friends and family falling into this category. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've not otherwise percevied your approach (before this latest campaign) to be overtly hostile towards veganism.

I'm taking what you said literally under the core idea, that there are no other foundational rules. But perhaps comparison of different actions is not considered foundational. How would the framework compare/rank different outcomes or actions? 

For example, how would it compare two actions involving involuntary imposition? 

Or if an action involves one involuntary imposition (immoral) but also one voluntary assistance (moral), what does that imply overall? Is it always considered immoral, or does it depend on the extent of the imposition relative to the assistance?

This seems pretty deontological to me.

It seems like the core claim implies that genocide is no worse than having a phone stolen.

Re alternative proteins - as well as cultivated meat, there is precision fermentation. This could be used to produce a lot of the dairy and egg proteins that are used in food manufacturing, and would be less dependent on consumer acceptance. Precision fermentation also seems to be less technically challenging than cultured meat. 

I think it's quite plausible that over the last 10,000 years the benefits have not outweighed the costs.

It's also plausible that the next 10,000 years will be dramatically better - for humans, farmed animals, and wild animals. Further human economic development will be necessary to build the knowledge and resources to fully enable this. 

But this doesn't address whether supporting economic development of developing countries right now is a net benefit.

Given the focus here on companies, rather than non-profits, I wonder if this should be framed in terms of investments rather than donations. It seems like the companies mentioned aren't easy to invest in. 

One option here is Agronomics. This is an investment company that trades on the London Stock Exchange, and has a portfolio of over 20 companies, including 5 that focus on precision fermentation (as well as several that are 'fermentation derived', and others that work on cultured meat):

https://www.agronomics.im/portfolio/

I don't know how this compares... (read more)

I don't think we should care about biodiversity inherently. But it could be instrumentally valuable to protect large areas of nature until we have a much more detailed understanding of the species that are out there - and the potential food sources and medicinal compounds etc that could be valuable to humans and animals. My intuition is that the best interventions in this area will fall well short of the best interventions in other cause areas - but would still be a big step up from improving a basketball team!

If vegans do have higher rates of depression, it seems like there are several possible explanations:

1. It is indeed due to diet/nutrients.

2. There is a selection effect - people who go vegan are more likely to suffer from depression, but it's not due to a vegan diet. For example, perhaps people who go vegan are less conformist/willing to go against social norms, and this corresponds to a psychological profile that increases risk of depression.

3. Relatedly, it may be that going vegan is distressing because of seeing other people's animal consumption. This m... (read more)

This is a good point. I may be misinterpreting the cited research, but if the proposed training increases disclosures of CSA, that will (a) presumably reduce 'costs as a consequence' (which includes a monetised value of the physical and emotional harm suffered) but (b) plausibly increase 'costs in response' (due to increased police, prison, and safeguarding costs)

Considering that immigrants are also cheaper to the state than the native-born, and they outearn the native-born, migrants who arrived 2019-2023 will make a net contribution to British finances.

I do not think that the UK should restrict immigration for fiscal reasons. If the UK does choose to restrict immigration - as it seems inclined to do - it should be clear about why. It is not because immigrants have placed “public services and housing access… under too much pressure” and immigration threatens the welfare state. Rather, it is simply because voters do

I agree that we shouldn't only care about the perspective of humans. But if humans aren't around then much of the potential energy on Earth will simply go unused (unless another technologically advanced species evolves or visits Earth from elsewhere). So yes, this would be a waste.

energy can neither be created nor be destroyed, it is naturally a zero sum game

While energy cannot be created or destroyed at the level of the universe, this doesn't mean it's a zero sum game from the perspective of life on Earth. There is a huge amount of energy available in the form of atomic energy, solar energy, tidal energy etc that is simply going unused. If humans use this, no-one loses out.

The amount is related to the value by some constant, unless you’re implying a time factor

Yes, I and others have explicitly been saying time is a factor, e.g. see my 2 examples above and comments by others. The amount is likely not related to value by some constant. The value that a given amount of money can buy will vary over time. 

but as far as I can see, the timing concern is a red herring, as in my model the pump is already primed and wealthy enough donors are dying in week one. 

I'll be honest, I don't understand this point, or why it means th... (read more)

results in more money per unit time donated within the population, that would seem to be more effective to me

This is still only considering the amount of money donated, not the value of what the money can buy.

No, I don't understand your point. The fact that some people are dying and donating now doesn't answer the question of whether people who are not dying now should donate or invest now.

I don't think it's specifically about the EA population.

The value of donations may change over time. Your model shows that investing results in having more money to donate in the future. But it doesn't seem to take into account the value of that money (or the value of what the money can buy). This might change over time. 

A couple of examples:

• Assume everyone invests now rather than donates.
  • But in the year 2035 humanity is destroyed .
  • The value of the investments then becomes zero. We would have been better off donating to help prevent whatever caused hu

Thanks, this is helpful. I think I was wrong, and as you/Diana suggest scallops actually have a more developed nervous system than mussels

This is a good suggestion.

My (limited) understanding is that scallops might be even better than oysters and mussels as they are typically larger (so fewer are killed to obtain a given quantity of protein) and are possibly even less neurally developed (edit: this seems wrong - see below)

I also wonder about wider ecosystem impacts. As @Vasco Grilo🔸 has suggested, the impact on soil invertebrates may dominate the moral value of farming on the land - but there is huge uncertainty. 

I'd be surprised if there is a similarly large population of aquatic organ... (read more)

An existential risk is a one-shot scenario for humanity. We are the single participant. There is no larger portfolio to average out the 99.9% chance of failure

But there may well be a large portfolio of actions we can take to reduce existential risk. In most cases there are many shots we can take.

Related - see Ambitious Impact's Founding to Give program and intro post here. I wonder how the first cohort are getting on...

This is happening! Last month in the UK dog food containing cultured chicken meat went on sale - albeit so far just as a trial in a single pet shop. 

This seems like an interesting post that synthesises a range of ideas and draws out some important implications. 

However, at the moment it's essentially a wall of text, which might be deterring people from engaging with the content. For better engagement, I'd recommend improving readability by:

• Adding an executive summary (for ease, maybe share it with ChatGPT and ask it to do this, then tweak). The introduction clearly sets out the structure, but isn't really a summary. Note that there is a Forum bot that sometimes add an executive summary as a commen

I'm inclined to agree that EAs should think more politically in general. 

But the value of specific actions depends on both scale/leverage and the probability of success. 

Influencing governments in the short-term has a low probability of success, unless you're already in a position of power or it's an issue that is relatively uncontroversial (e.g. with limited trade-offs).

Because of the scale of government spending, it could still be worth trying - but the main value might be in learning lessons on how to get better at influencing in the future, rather than having any immediate impact.

"Much of the evidence we cite is from charities’ own webpages. Charities have the ability to change their webpages to potentially alter, conceal, and/or destroy evidence that we have cited"

https://web.archive.org/ (aka Wayback Machine) regularly saves old versions of webpages. Maybe select a bunch of charities at random to see how thorough it is? In theory the charities could ask for old versions of their websites to be deleted from the archive, but there's no guarantees the archive would comply with their request and if they did it would look very suspicious if basically every other charity is on there.

Benefits (conservative estimates):

• 10% improvement in policy decisions
• Applied to city budgets ($100M-1B+)
• Yearly benefit: $10M-100M per city
• Net Present Value (30 years, 5% discount rate): $150M-1.5B per city

I upvoted because I think you're touching on some interesting ideas. But I think you have a lot to do to demonstrate the scale of benefits you describe - if you have a more detailed analysis, I'd encourage you to link to it in the above section.

In particular: 

• What evidence there is for (at least) a 10% improvement in policy decisions? I can see how t

I expect that the best thing to do will vary substantially depending on whether we're considering 

• (a) the EA community / movement-building per se
• (b) EA-aligned organisations trying to implement specific projects for a given cause area
• (c) fundraising

With (a), we'd want to consider some of the cultural risks or unintended consequences (e.g. as pointed by David Mathers and titotal) alongside the benefit of different perspectives. But this is less important for (b), where engaging and collaborating with people with more conversative perspectives could be ... (read more)

Strong upvote for bothering to read the terms and conditions!

"You say that viewed from your and many EA’s moral framework, nature has no value?"

No - Gemma said nature has no "intrinsic moral value". There is a difference between intrinsic value and instrumental value. Intrinsic value is something that is valued for its own sake. Instrumental value is where something is valuable because it contributes to something else. 

Nature clearly has instrumental value, i.e. "we care about environmental protection primarily because of its impact on sentient beings".

But nature isn't the only thing that has an impact on senti... (read more)

That might be right. Another explanation is that even if she takes x-risk seriously, she thinks it's easier build political support around regulating AI by highlighting existing problems. 

I don't have a clear answer - but if your concern is intense suffering of animals, why not get involved with animal rights/welfare activism? Is there a reason to favour climate activism?

This is just speculation, but I wonder if it's more cost-effective to donate to a Senate candidate who is also running in a Presidential swing state? Maybe Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Arizona?

It seems plausible that a strong Senate candidate could inspire voters to get out and vote for a President they're not enthusiastic about - essentially a 'reverse coattails' effect (though I don't think there's particularly strong evidence for this)

Also in the article "The Animal and Plant Health Agency - part of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs - gave the product the go-ahead."

I think there are a bunch of EAs working at Defra - I wonder if they helped facilitate this?

Lab-grown meat approved for pet food in the UK 

"The UK has become the first European country to approve putting lab-grown meat in pet food.

Regulators cleared the use of chicken cultivated from animal cells, which lab meat company Meatly is planning to sell to manufacturers.

The company says the first samples of its product will go on sale as early as this year, but it would only scale its production to reach industrial volumes in the next three years."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c19k0ky9v4yo

I have taken the pledge but I'm not currently donating 10%, so don't feel I can authentically promote it to others right now.

I guess it's worth waiting to see what each party says in its manifesto.

But unless the polls dramatically tighten, it doesn't seem particularly valuable to spend time weighing up which party to vote for at a national level because it's highly likely (>90%) that Labour will win.

What might be valuable is considering the top couple of candidates in your local constituency (once candidates are confirmed) and going along to a hustings event to directly ask them for their views. Some constituencies will be determined by a relatively small number of votes - po... (read more)

I'm also confused as to why $10bn per disease is suggested, given the much higher costs of the listed examples. 

However, it seems plausible that costs per disease will substantially decrease as we learn more about biology and how to successfully run eradication campaigns. For example, developing a new vaccine technology against one virus could make it much easier and cheaper to develop vaccines against related viruses.

I sort of agree, but a couple of points:

1.  I think advice can be useful from those who have tried something but failed (though plausibly many of those who eventually succeeded will have initially failed). 
   1. If we only seek advice from those who have quite easily succeeded, we risk hearing a biased view of the world that may not be the best advice for us. We may have more in common with those who failed, and may be better off hearing from these people in order to avoid their mistakes.
2. Presumably, we would like to hear from a broad range of people who h

This sounds potentially valuable. However, it's important to establish what the added value of this project would be. 

What current processes/systems/databases do scientists currently use to identify relevant research and bacteria? What about these existing processes/systems/databases is most in need of improving? Which scientists in the field have you spoken to about this in order to identify the main challenges they face when using existing systems?

Also...is there a reason for only focusing on antibiotic producing bacteria and not including fungi?

Thanks for clarifying! 

Interesting point about Drinkaware - I didn't know it was partly industry-funded. Given this, even though I'd hope the information they provide is broadly accurate, I'm assuming it is more likely to be framed through the lens of personal choice rather than advocating for government action (e.g. higher taxes on alcohol).

I presume the $5-10M also only refers to alcohol-specific philanthropy? I would expect there to be some funding for it via adjacent topics, such as organisations that work on drugs/addiction more broadly, or ones that focus on promoting nutrition and healthy lifestyles. 

Some excellent points.

In addition, I'm confused about the figure of $5-10m for spending on alcohol. This is roughly how much is spent by just two alcohol charities in the UK (Drinkaware and Alcohol Research UK). So global philanthropic spending on alcohol is presumably much higher - and then there's also any government spending.

Perhaps the $5-10m figure is supposed to only apply to low and middle income countries, or money moved as part of development assistance for health?

I'm no longer going to engage with you because this comes across as being deliberately offensive and provocative.

Assuming that first claim is true, I'm not sure it follows that deferred donation looks even better. You'd still need to know about the marginal cost-effectiveness of the best interventions, which won't necessarily change at the same rate as the wider economy.

The cost-effectiveness of interventions doesn't necessarily stay fixed over time. We would expect it to get more expensive to save a life over time, as the lowest-hanging fruit should get picked first. 

(I'm not definitely saying that it's better to donate now rather than investing and donating later - the changing cost-effectiveness of interventions is just one thing that needs to be taken into account)

This is a useful analysis, and collectively I agree it suggests there has been a negative impact overall.

However, I think you may be overly confident when you say things like "FTX has had an obvious negative impact on the number of donors giving through EA Funds", and "Pledge data from Giving What We Can shows a clear and dramatic negative impact from FTX". 

The data appears to be consistent with this, but it could be consistent with other explanations (or, more likely, a combination of explanations including FTX). For example, over the past couple of ... (read more)

To the extent that this is based on game theory, it's probably worth considering that there may well be more than just 2 civilizations (at least over timescales of hundreds or thousands of years).

As well as Earth and Mars, there may be the Moon, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn (and potentially others, maybe even giant space stations). As such, any unwarranted attack by one civilization on another might result in responses by the remaining civilizations. That could introduce some sort of deterrent effect on striking first.

I think the purpose of the 'overall karma' button on comments should be changed. 

Currently, it asks 'how much do you like this overall?'. I think this should be amended to something like 'how much do you think this is useful or important?'. 

This is because I think there is still a too strong correlation between 'liking' a comment, and 'agreeing' with it. 

For example, in the recent post about nonlinear, many people are downvoting comments by Kat and Emerson. Given that the post concerns their organisation, their responses should not be at ris... (read more)

This is a very helpful post. I'm surprised the events are so expensive, but breakdown of costs and explanations make sense.

That said, this makes me much more skeptical about the value of EAG given the alternative potential uses of funds - even just in terms of other types of events. 

As suggested by Ozzie, I'd definitely like to see a comparison with the potential value of smaller events, as well as experimentation. 

Spending $2k per person might be good value, but I think we could do better. Perhaps there is an analogy with cash transfers as a ben... (read more)